"Gee Wally...."

Most people look back on the 50s as an era when all was good and innocent in America. While this romanticized perception of the time period isn’t entirely accurate, you can’t really blame people for seeing it that way, thanks to television sitcoms such as Happy Days and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. And then there is the granddaddy of all shows to portray the perfect American family from a simpler time in history – Leave It To Beaver, the tale of a young boy living with his postcard-perfect family that, for all of his good-natured intentions, could never quite stay out of trouble.

Debuting in 1957, Leave It To Beaver brought audiences to the fictional town of Mayfield, home of the Cleaver Family. Family Patriarch Ward (Hugh Beaumont) and his picture-perfect wife, June (Barbara Billingsley) raised their two sons, Wally and Theodore (nicknamed “The Beaver” or “Beav” for short) in suburbia. Ward possessed a library of parables, ready to be unleashed whenever one of the boys needed guidance and June epitomized the perfect mother and homemaker.

Unlike previous sitcoms, this one focused more on the kids than the parents. Wally and the Beaver had this amazing talent for attracting trouble and, as if they needed help, their friends were perfectly willing to steer them towards it at every opportunity. Wally’s infamous cohort was the deceptive Eddie Haskell, who had the ability to flatter all with his beaming smile, but was pure evil underneath. Wally also regularly palled around with the far-less dubious Lumpy Rutherford. Meanwhile, the Beaver had his own instigators, such as Gilbert Bates, who had all of the same not-so-endearing qualities of Eddie and the perpetually hungry Larry Mondello, who helped Beav get into plenty of trouble when he wasn’t busy complaining. Whitey Whitney was one of the Beaver’s better behaved friends.

Whatever trouble Beaver and Wally got into, it was never anything too serious, although it was usually quite amusing, such as when the Beaver got stuck in a billboard sign featuring a large soup bowl and had to be rescued by the local firemen. And upon rescue, his father was waiting in the wings to deliver one of his fatherly observations - "As you go through life, try to improve yourself, not prove yourself" After these regular doses of fatherly wisdom, the boys seemingly learned their lessons, then went right back to the mischief that they were famous for.

As the boys grew older, with Beaver in high school and Wally entering college, it was time for the series to come to an end, and after six seasons, and 234 episodes, Leave It To Beaver concluded in 1963. But that certainly wasn’t the end of the Cleaver clan’s popularity – not by a long shot. The show immediately moved into syndication and enjoyed decades of sustained success. Then, in 1983, the entire cast (with the exception of Hugh Beaumont, who had passed away a year earlier) reunited for a made-for-television film called Still the Beaver. The success of the special led to a series called The New Leave It To Beaver, which aired on cable and provided fans with 105 new episodes over the four years that it ran. Finally, in 1997, the classic series was remade into a feature film, Leave It To Beaver, with an all-new cast.

Leave It To Beaver represented all that was good, a time when some humorous mischief was really all parents had to worry about. No gangs, no drugs, just the evil-incarnate Eddie Haskell and whole lot of laugh-out-loud moments as the Beaver navigated through the typical trials and tribulations of childhood. And blessed with perhaps the most perfect parents a boy could ever hope for, the Beaver managed to turn out just fine.